this Opinion would have every mixt Body to consist of. And this very thing (continues _Carneades_) may serve to take away or lessen your Wonder, that just so many Bodies as five should be found upon the Resolution of Concretes. For since we find not that the fire can make any such _Analysis_ (into five Elements) of Metals and other Mineral Bodies, whose Texture is more strong and permanent, it remains that the Five Substances under consideration be Obtain'd from Vegetable and Animal Bodies, which (probably by reason of their looser Contexture) are capable of being Distill'd. And as to such Bodies, 'tis natural enough, that, whether we suppose that there are, or are not, precisely five Elements, there should ordinarily occurr in the Dissipated parts a five Fold Diversity of Scheme (if I may so speak.) For if the Parts do not remain all fix'd, as in Gold, Calcin'd Talck, &c. nor all ascend, as in the Sublimation of Brimstone, Camphire, &c. but after their Dissipation do associate themselves into new Schemes of Matter; it is very likely, that they will by the Fire be divided into fix'd and Volatile (I mean, in Reference to that degree of heat by which they are destill'd) and those Volatile parts will, for the most part, ascend either in a dry forme, which Chymists are pleas'd to call, if they be Tastless, Flowers; if Sapid, Volatile Salt; or in a Liquid Forme. And this Liquor must be either inflamable, and so pass for oyl, or not inflamable, and yet subtile and pungent, which may be call'd Spirit; or else strengthless or insipid, which may be nam'd Phlegme, or Water. And as for the fixt part, or _Caput Mortuum_, it will most commonly consist of Corpuscles, partly Soluble in Water, or Sapid, (especially if the Saline parts were not so Volatile, as to fly away before) which make up its fixt salt; and partly insoluble and insipid, which therefore seems to challenge the name of Earth. But although upon this ground one might easily enough have foretold, that the differing substances obtain'd from a perfectly mixt Body by the Fire would for the most part be reducible to the five newly mentioned States of Matter; yet it will not presently follow, that these five Distinct substances were simple and primogeneal bodies, so pre-existent in the Concrete that the fire does but take them asunder. Besides that it does not appear, that all Mixt Bodies, (witness, Gold, Silver, Mercury, &c.) Nay nor perhaps all Vegetables, which may appear by what we said above of _Camphire_, _Benzoin_, &c. are resoluble by Fire into just such differing Schemes of Matter. Nor will the Experiments formerly alledg'd permit us to look upon these separated Substances as Elementary, or uncompounded. Neither will it be a sufficient Argument of their being Bodies that deserve the Names which Chymists are pleas'd to give them, that they have an Analogy in point of Consistence, or either Volatility or Fixtness, or else some